


Gods and Monsters

by Shorti



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Maria Hill, Civil War (Marvel), Civil War AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shorti/pseuds/Shorti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria knows the war truly started the day she allowed her heart to get the better of her head. Steve knows he asks too much of Maria, but when it comes to Bucky he can’t afford restraint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gods and Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Canon might have tried to drop Maria but that doesn't mean fandom will. This is one of my many little plot bunnies involving the Civil War AU. 
> 
> Apologies in advance for the terrible editing. I had less than a day to write this and my brain just isn't functioning right now.

_All men are made of monsters. Gods are just men who have yet to fall._

* * *

When the dust settles, the official reports will recall that the war began when Barnes regressed into the Winter Soldier and attacked Colonel Rhodes.

“He’s dangerous!” Rhodey had asserted while Stark hovered over him, assessing the damage to the Iron Patriot’s suit.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” Steve countered, stepping in between his friend and the agents sent to arrest him.

Maria knows the sparks truly ignited the day she allowed her heart to get the better of her head.

She had awoken without Steve’s warmth enveloping her, and found him kneeling before the balcony at the Avengers' Tower. His head was bowed and his fist crushed his cell phone, as though the night air was seeping all the hope from him.

Maria doesn’t do hiding but she’s a phenomenal seeker. Back in the day Fury had eyes everywhere and she puts those eyes to good use. After a month of arduous searching she finds Barnes in the most fitting place. Wandering the streets of Steve’s old neighbourhood, incoherent but with vicious, coiled power hidden beneath his hooded overcoat.

Steve almost weeps when she makes the call and she wishes now that she hadn’t suppressed her instincts in the name of loyalty.

It’s her own fault for thinking that Captain America would ever let go of the guilt and responsibility that drove him to become a science experiment in the first place.

* * *

 

 Steve knows he asks too much of Maria, but when it comes to Bucky he can’t afford restraint.

“You fight a battle between past and present,” Wanda had said to him in the kitchen of the safe house. “I cannot tell which one will break you first.”

Steve has a feeling it will be the latter when Maria corners him in the hallway.

“I didn’t hand him back so that you could start a war,” she says. “You’re not helping him by turning him into a fugitive. If he stands trial there’s a good chance he’ll get treatment.” Her expression is closed and her posture locked in.

“I can’t let them take him,” Steve pleads. “He’s not himself and they need a scapegoat. Please don’t make me choose.”

Deep in his heart, Steve knows Maria would never put him, or herself in that position. It’s not the personal belongings so easily discarded after she leaves that cut him to the quick, but the fact that she takes a part of him with her.

It’s his own fault for thinking he could ever hold on to the Iron Maiden.

* * *

 

“You knew them best,” Councilmen Chen says to Maria at the World Security Council meeting she’d been summoned to. “Every weakness and vulnerability. Do your duty and bring them in.”

If any of them could get their head out of their asses and read the cues, then they’d understand what Maria’s slow blink means. It’s a red flag as well as a contained sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Maria says. “You seem to be under the misapprehension that I still work for you. If you have a problem with my inaction please take it up with my lawyers at Stark Industries.”

She turns on her heels and ambles out slowly, giving them every opportunity to arrest her even though she knows they don’t have the balls to do it. It isn’t until she’s safely back in the car that Maria allows herself to punch the dash in frustration.

Her phone lights up for the hundredth time in the past few weeks, but this time the contact makes her frown.

She meets former S.H.I.E.L.D tech Cameron Klein feeding the ducks in Central Park.

“Should I be concerned about your choice of meeting place?” Maria says.

“I like watching them swim,” Klein says. “It’s peaceful.” His curly brown hair has been shaved close to his scalp but those soft brown eyes still shine with naive hope. Something Maria has long since buried. They don’t exchange pleasantries because the less she knows about where his fox holes are, the better. The Strike and Insight crew held grudges and Klein drew their notice as someone who couldn’t be persuaded so easily.

He hands her a yellow envelope but grips the corner tight as she goes to take it.

“I don’t believe gods and monsters are different anymore,” he says. “Not since Rumlow ordered me to launch those helicarriers. But I have a hard time believing Cap is doing this for nothing.”

“That’s the whole point isn’t it?” Maria says. “Why are we picking sides in a needless war that shouldn’t be happening? Thanks for this.”

“Any time, Lieutenant.”

“It’s just Maria now.”

 He shakes his head vigorously. “You were never just Maria.”

She’s smiling a little, for the first in months, until she sees what’s inside the envelope. Then she’s on the phone before she’s thought through exactly what needs to happen. Sometimes, fighting a war alone is just the ass end of stupid.

“Melinda, it’s me. I need to see you.”

* * *

 

The attack comes out of nowhere and even Wanda can’t anticipate the kind of firepower they’ve got behind it. Steve’s lungs heave as he leaps over the burning  wreckage on the highway, just in time to watch Black Panther snatch Bucky up in a choke hold and slam him into the concrete.

Then Stark is all over Steve and they grapple mid-air. Steve might once have pulled his punches out of friendship, but his fists have become gauntlets of unadulterated fury. He tears at the Iron Man suit like it’s going out of fashion and only narrowly misses being scorched by Stark’s repulsor blast. He rips the whole arm section off Stark’s suit before attempting to crack the helmet with his shield.

Steve knows the source of his black hatred lies in what he believes is Maria’s betrayal, but he can’t compartmentalize his feelings. Not when it comes to her.

He doesn’t register until Wanda screams inside his head that they need to go. It isn’t until they’ve made a strategic retreat that Sam pulls him aside. This safe house has been one of many but they’re all the same in the end.

“Dude, what the hell was that?”

Steve’s not done releasing his anger but Sam isn’t one to question his actions unless something is terribly wrong.

“Get your head in the game, Cap,” Sam sighs. “If Maria was with them then we would have been caught no question. That attack was sloppy. Not her style.”

Steve wants to counter with a denial but Sam knows him too well. “I miss her too,” Sam says. “But she’s gone. Deal with it.”

So he does deal with it, but not in ways Sam approves of. Though Sharon doesn’t complain.

* * *

Maria and Melinda arrive too late to forestall the flashing of the cameras as Pepper levels a midtown building in her attempt to escape the agents on her tail.

“I thought Stark rendered the virus inactive!” Melinda calls from her position as pilot. The quinjet glides between the buildings like a swallow on the breeze.

“I guess not,” Maria says, strapping the zip line securely around her chest. “Ready?”

Melinda answers by flicking the switch to open the hanger. Maria counts the beats in her head and then throws herself out of the quinjet, trusting the best pilot she’s ever met to line her up in the right spot. Melinda doesn’t fail her and Maria grabs hold of Pepper at the same time the enhanced soldier makes a play for her. Even one handed Maria is a decent shot but she almost drops Pepper when her bullet hits its target and he swears in Rumlow’s voice.

Then she’s being winched back into the hanger and her thoughts turn to her friend.

Pepper shakes with the effort to contain her power, but there are tears in her eyes. “I can’t go back,” Pepper says in a voice that tears at Maria’s insides. “They’ll try and have me registered and I didn’t ask for this!”

Maria lowers herself to a crouch and ignores the warning that she might be blown up if she takes Pepper’s hand. “It’s okay, we’re taking you to safety.”

Safety, as it turns out, is also the most dangerous place for a woman who can spontaneously detonate to be. But a man with spectacular rage issues is also the strongest thing standing in the way of Pepper being caught.

“I’ll try and keep her contained,” Bruce promises. “Helen and I will find a way to deactivate her. Maria,” He snatches her sleeve. “This has to end.”

Maria regroups with Melinda on the ride home. Melinda pieces the puzzle together and hisses at the conclusion. “First they go after Gwen Stacey and now Pepper,” Melinda says. “We can’t keep faking deaths and hiding people. If this Baron Zemo wants to take down super heroes he’s doing a good job of it. What better way than to have them kill each other?”

She’s going somewhere with this and Maria isn’t liking the way Melinda is focused on her. “He’s going after the ones they love,” Melinda says. “Fueling the fire on both sides. Taking out people he thinks are vulnerable.” Her smile is creepy to the point that it’s dangerous. “But you’re not vulnerable are you, Maria? But somebody does love you.”

It doesn’t take much more convincing for Maria to be persuaded into having a tracker chip inserted into her arm. She barely has to wait at all for the vultures to descend after that.

* * *

 

Steve’s always prided himself on his ability to lead a team, but then again, he’s mostly been on the winning side. The news reports keep spitting out stories of death and destruction wrought at the hands of super heroes. So much so that he doesn’t bother to watch it anymore. That doesn’t stop the others from doing so and he can see the conviction in them wavering and can’t seem to do anything about it.

When the worst happens, Steve can’t contain his fury.

“You were supposed to be watching him!” Steve says through gritted teeth at Wanda.

“I can only do so much when he resists me!” She snaps back. “He didn’t signal like he was supposed to if he was in trouble.”

 “So you’re saying he wanted to get caught?”

“Don’t take it out on her!” Sharon interjects. “We all lost him!”

Steve can’t even look at her because there are so many other things unsaid between them. Like the real reason why their brief dalliance died before it began and the fact that Steve isn’t blind and sees the way her eyes flickers to Bucky when she’s thinking no one notices.

Ironically, they can’t stop watching the news now, waiting for the moment when it will be announced that the Winter Soldier has been caught. But it doesn’t come and two days later Steve begins to fear that it’s not Stark or the government who have hold of his best friend. More importantly, Steve doesn’t have the slightest clue or the time to go looking for him and the one woman who was able to find Bucky is lost to Steve forever.

* * *

 

Maria can’t tell if these screams are fresh or the echoes of wails long since extracted from her lips. She wakes and dozes at confusing intervals, knowing only that the room she’s in is cold and stinks and that the electricity they charge through her veins will have nullified the tracking chip.

She’s dragged into consciousness by the sound of scraping of feet and the opening of the door to her cell. Playing dead is her best bet for survival right now, but that familiar voice again almost shocks her into revealing herself.

“Put him on the other side of her,” The man who was once Brock Rumlow says.

“What if he attacks her?” Another man asks.

“They’re just as good to us dead as they are alive.”

“The Baron wants what she knows of the others.”

A pause as the click of a camera fills the room. “He’s wasting his time. The bitch is never going to give him what he wants.”

They leave as unceremoniously as they came and after twenty minutes of careful consideration Maria allows herself to peep under barely opened lids and finds the Winter Soldier strapped to a chair opposite her. Worse still they’ve removed his metal arm.

Another five minutes of glacially slow and deafeningly quiet skidding and she’s managed to manoeuvre her chair beside his.

“Bucky!” Maria whispers. She taps him with her foot when he doesn’t rouse. A couple of less gentle prods and he finally moans. Then he’s suddenly alert and if he weren’t tied down, he’d be choking her to death.

“Shut the hell up, Barnes!”

“Who’s Barnes? Who are you?”

Maria suppresses a frustrated scream. “I’m the one stuck in here with you and I’m the one who’s probably going to get us out so do me a favour and stop making so much noise.”

If they weren’t in this situation, Maria would be impressed with his improvement. He’s still lapsing but he’s managing to hold on to his sanity. She grits her teeth when she thinks about how much better he’d do with proper treatment.

Right now, however she’s got other problems.

“I’m going to lean over and you’re going to try and undo the pin in my hair with your mouth, got it?”

His eyes are dull but he nods nonetheless. His teeth are like blunt razors, dragging at her hair but he finally manages to catch the pin in his teeth. He spits it out and it flies into Maria’s palm. She pinpoints the minute switch with her thumb and activates the low powered laser. Not exactly the big guns but enough to cut through her handcuffs and then his. Maria makes a note to thank Parker for the gift in exchange for putting Gwen into hiding.

Together they make short work of the guards in the facility and Barnes proves just like Steve has time and time again, that it’s not the weapons which make them formidable.

For a moment she thinks they’re going to make it out and then a hand snatches her from behind and drags her into the corridor.

She recognizes Rumlow’s snicker in her ear as he relieves her of her weapons and a dozen guards descend on Barnes. Their taser rods light up the dim corner and they proceed to beat him into submission. He takes out four before he collapses and were it not for the fingers crushing Maria’s windpipe, she would be screaming his name.

Strength was never Rumlow’s weak point but the force behind his fist is beyond normal human capability. He was a fantastic soldier but never an inventive fighter and with her last breath Maria forces herself to glance briefly behind him and allows the tiniest smile to tug at her lips. He takes the bait like he always used to and for a second his hold slackens as he surveys what might be happening out back.

Maria takes that moment to snatch her gun back from his belt and doesn’t even hesitate as she empties the clip into his chest.

She uses his body as a shield to protect herself against oncoming bullets and then the roar of an explosion rocks the facility. A body torpedoes through the cracked window and then Melinda upholds her reputation as a force to be reckoned with. She takes out the rest of the guards a Maria attempts to take a breath.

On the quinjet, Maria can’t help but feel nauseous at the information they’ve managed to gather.

“It’s like the electronic version of your brain,” Melinda says when she sees the enormous database of information on not only the Avengers, but every super hero known to man. Zemo has coded the project as MEDUSA. The comparison isn’t even slightly funny and Maria says so.

Her first call to Stark is met with a sarcastic claim that she’s been fired for going MIA on the job. Her second call is met with a long pause as Steve contemplates her statement.

“In case you’re thinking of not showing up,” Maria adds before she hangs up, “I’ve got Barnes and this time I’m keeping him.”

* * *

There is grudging silence in the room as Maria and Melinda enter with a full contingent of agents behind them. It’s not even close to enough backup to contain the heroes present, but it’s a symbolic gesture. One that says Maria is done with their ego bashing.

They sit on either side of the conference table, eyeing each other off suspiciously. She takes special effort not to let her attention rest on Steve.

“I trust you’ve read the field reports,” Maria says.

“Pretty farfetched,” Stark mumbles.

“And Ultron was what?”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, no need to bite my head off! Can I have Pepper back now please?”

“I don’t quite understand,” Steve says. “Are you saying this Baron Zemo is attempting to destroy superheroes by having them fight each other?”

“That’s precisely what we’re saying.”

“To what end?”

 Maria grapples with an explanation that will end all of this chaos.

Finally, she crosses her arms over her chest. “Cut off one head, two more shall rise. Hail HYDRA.”

* * *

The media has a field day and congress demands everything Maria has turned up and more. Registration happens but under the watchful eye of a woman who has stood on both sides of the fence and lived to understand the nuances. Steve has no doubt that Pepper will do for super hero relations what she’s managed to do for Stark Industries.

Steve is front and center at Bucky’s trial where his sentence is suspended pending a detailed investigation and rehabilitative treatment. The senate inquiry into Captain America’s actions is short and pathetically incomplete because they can’t find fault in his motives or his willingness to allow then to arrest him for the sake of justice. He should be happy when they offer him Champion status with the ability to assemble any team, at any time, in order to carry out his duty protecting the public. But after everything that’s happened, Steve’s not sure his heart is in it anymore.

Melinda tells him Fury offered to help Maria disappear but Steve knows even before he knocks tentatively on her door at the Avengers Tower that she didn’t take up Fury’s offer. He also knows she doesn’t do forgiveness but he wouldn’t be him if he doesn’t try.

That wall she kept between them when they first met is up again and the shiver that runs up his spine at her lack of greeting is like a nail in his coffin.

“I don’t know what to say,” he grasps pathetically.

“Then why did you come?” Maria wants to know. “Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all.”

She sits back down at her desk and begins typing. It hurts knowing that he’ll probably never get or deserve her full attention again. But Steve’s not one to wallow in self-pity and if he’s learned anything from what happened, it’s that Maria cares too much rather than not at all. He’s never going to make the mistake of taking her care for granted again.

For now though, he doesn’t want to push. Instead he leaves her office quietly, closing the door with a barely audible click.

“You know,” Stark’s voice comes from behind him. “If she really hated you, she’d probably have shot you on sight.” Steve doesn’t turn because there’s still too much animosity between them to have a civil conversation. But he nods his head in acknowledgement.

On the ride home he can't fault Stark's logic. As Steve pushes the key into his door and his eyes linger over the spot on the bed where Maria used to sleep, Peggy's words come back to him.

_"You don't know a bloody thing about women," Peggy had said._

But maybe he doesn't need to know about all women. Maybe knowing just one woman, intimately, is enough. He keeps trying to prove himself worthy of Dr. Erskine's experiment but Steve is starting to wonder if he would prefer just to be worthy of her.

           


End file.
